Warriors coach Steve Kerr answers five questions on NBA's current, future state originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
The last five decades of basketball have included Steve Kerr as a central figure in a variety of ways. Let’s count a few.
By the mid-80s, Kerr had become a known name at the University of Arizona. Kerr twice was an All-Pac-12 First Team selection, tore his ACL playing for Team USA following his breakout junior year, and came back to help lead the Wildcats to the Final Four. He then was the very last pick of the second round in the 1988 NBA Draft, No. 50 overall.
It took until Kerr’s fourth team, the Chicago Bulls, for him to find his home in the NBA. Kerr played for three teams in his first five years in the NBA and averaged 5.0 points and 15.5 minutes per game. In his first season with the Chicago Bulls, Kerr scored 8.6 points per game and averaged 24.8 minutes. That was his first of three straight championships in Chicago from 1996 through 98.
When the Bulls dispersed, Kerr went to San Antonio and won his fourth straight title to close out the 90s and won his fifth in his final season as a player with the 2002-03 Spurs. He began broadcasting alongside Marv Albert in 2003 and left in 2007 to become the general manager of the Phoenix Suns, where in three seasons they had a win percentage of 63.0 (155-91).
Kerr took his first crack at coaching going into the 2014-15 season and has been the Warriors’ head coach ever since. The Warriors won their first championship in 40 years in Kerr’s first season, which started a run of five straight trips to the NBA Finals and three more rings for his fingers.
He has one finger free after the Warriors’ championship in 2022, making Kerr a nine-time champion – five as a player and four as a coach. He also thought his days coaching the Warriors might have reached the end of the road at the end of last season. Kerr is back, signing up for his 13th and 14th seasons coaching the Warriors, and with his return, we have five questions for him on the current and future state of the NBA.
All questions were part of an exclusive interview with myself, Kerr and Bonta Hill in Hawaii during Warriors training camp, except for the third, which was a question of mine at a recent practice.
Where do you see this league in five years when it comes to offensive principles?
“I mean, it’s always hard to predict those things, but the trends of pace and space continue to evolve. It’s not necessarily like analytically you’re tracking speed and pace. It’s more what are teams running to kind of emphasize those concepts, and what I’m seeing is fewer play calls and more flow basketball, more concepts just being executed.
“And the faster the game, the more difficult it is to get organized. So you have to figure that out without slowing down a called play, and that’s a lot of what we’re working on right now.”
Are you seeing a little bit, though, of a big man revolution at the same time, where a lot of teams are going two-big at times, but there’s still the pace and space too? What’s the balance there right now in the NBA?
“I think for a while everybody thought going small was the best way to go. Now teams are playing the same style, but with bigger players. So ideally, if you can play with pace and space with four guys who are seven feet tall, hell yeah, let’s do that.
“But I think what’s happening is the younger players who are big with size, guys like Karl Anthony Towns or Victor Wembanyama, they’re growing up shooting threes and handling the ball and making plays. So you’re seeing a whole generation of young players come up with a different skill level than when my generation was coming up, where it was more specialized, you know, specific to certain positions.
“It’s positionless basketball. But man, these guys are more skilled than ever, and such big size. It’s really impressive.”
You talk a lot about how skilled today’s players are. What is the one skill most required to have success in today’s NBA?
“I don’t know if there’s one, but I think compared to the old days, it’s hard to be a specialist anymore. In the old days, like everyone had three seven-foot guys who they knew their job was to guard Patrick Ewing, or Shaq, or Hakeem [Olajuwon], and that was why they were on the team. Today, that specialization doesn’t really exist nearly as much.
“No matter what position you play, you need to be able to process and understand the game better. It’s faster. Decision making happens quicker. … I said this to you guys the other day: My checklist is dribble, pass, shoot, and process. Today’s players need to do all four of those things pretty well, and if not well, then they have to do them serviceably to be able to survive.”
Are we moving closer to covering the game the right way in terms of the media base? Because it feels like the playoffs were a lot of fun to watch. People focused on San Antonio and the Knicks and the way they played, and OKC or whatnot. What do you think of all that?
“I honestly think that we are, all of us in the NBA, we’re all part of a soap opera. Like, we are. It’s not just a sport. You look at the way fashion is now covered in the NBA. That’s impacted what guys are wearing to the game. That’s brought in a lot of other fans who maybe otherwise wouldn’t have been interested. The day-to-day soap opera of conflict and style and everything in between, it’s actually good for the league.
“It draws a lot of attention. It draws a lot of ratings. The flip side is for the players and the coaches, you got to have thick skin, and ignorance is bliss. I don’t look at any of that stuff on social media, so that part’s good. But it’s never been more difficult to be an athlete in today’s age because of the vitriol, the anger they get, and so we try to help our guys understand that this is part of the machine.
“This is part of the soap opera. You have to embrace it, but don’t take it very seriously. The only people that matter are at your home and in the gym.”
Between the Bulls, the Spurs, and the Warriors, you’ve been with all these dynasties. The way the league is now, though, is the parity good? Is it good for the league, and will we ever see another dynasty the way the league is now?
“It’s a good question. I think you have to get into the CBA dynamics. I don’t like the fact that once you build a good team, you have to start getting rid of players. I would like to see teams able to hang on to their players, like what we’ve done. I mean, it’s so special for our fans to have watched Steph [Curry] and Draymond [Green] together for 15 years now, and for a long time, Andre [Iguodala] and Klay [Thompson] and the whole group. Seems like that may be more difficult than ever to accomplish.
“I like parity, but I’d like to see teams be able to stick together too.”
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